you can learn more with the maps together than you can with them singularly

Comment: I love Google Maps. Street view is insane. I'm moving to Seattle for the summer and have virtually "walked" around the neighborhood I'll be living in a number of times. You can find all the coffee shops within a whatever-mile radius from any point you've clicked on. What could be better?

Nick MontfortInteractive Fiction

The big question: How do you combine a an interactive video game and a narrative into interactive fiction. . .and how do you make money off of it? Why do we care?

What he's envisioning/coding/currently rocking out on:

goes beyond Cave environments.

a limited simulation of a "microworld"

multiple realities for multiple characters (IF Actual World Model)

How do we get what we like about narratives into this format?

It's a function of the Expression vs. Content divide: interesting expression can make boring content entertaining.

We can vary tense, mood, and voice.

How do we change the old format into this vision? Most important factors in the program flow:

Big question: How do you combine the Information Technology and Industrial Design? Can we get HCI out of the software-only view? How can we make something tangible, that interacts with people and all their five senses?

To work on answering this, Harris created a Tangible Experience Design course. The idea? She has her students:

Study people in a particular context.

Decide how they want to change the experience for those people in that context.

Design something that can do that.

Build a prototype, test it, refine it, and so on.

She's still working to get the right balance: how much electronics, programming, which theories, how deep to go into each of these?

Comments: She spoke about two challenges she's given her classes, the second being "The Forest Challenge," or how to bring an environment to people. Supercool. Reminds me of a lot of the telemersion stuff that's going on here done in a more physical manner.

Abdul AlkalimateBlack Studies and the African Diaspora: A revolution in the revolution

Q: What can we do about the divide (community, spacial, racial, class) that's being created/furthered by digitization? How can we use digitization to decrease inequalities?

What do we need? We need a trans-disciplinary approach to study networks, their effects and meaning.

Peter LeonardMarking up Stone: TEI, GIS, and Medieval Runology

Q: How do we use these technologies to traverse digital boundaries in the same way analog boundaries have been traversed?

A: Peter presented two main functions here:

Take the GIS location to map the content of the rune against its location. We can then place them in the context of the religious migration, teaching ust more about the migration and giving us more information about the runes themselves.

We can use XSL to mark up corrections in carving errors and put modern date formats in place of the runic ones, without losing the original information.

Comment: Peter said that most people in the room were far more familiar with TEI than with runes and what they were. Invert that statement and you have me. Runes rock.

John JohnstonComputer Fictions as Cognitive Models

Q: What do we see in current computer fictions?

A: These works are everywhere and have some common threads:

no unifying agency

characters are closed systems

themes of hostile digital takeover of a character's life

entanglement: singular events can no longer happen, because everything is part of a network

no event is meaningless or random: it all fits somewhere

Jeffrey McClurkenUncomfortable, but Not Paralyzed

Question: How do we teach digital history to undergraduates? Answer: The following are necessary:

Digital literacy/fluency must be central to our methods

Emphasize creativity

Get rid of the term paper, as it's not relevant to post-school jobs.

Other points:

The idea of "digital natives" isn't useful: many people are "natives" to digital technology, but aren't at all fluent with it.

Start engaging undergrads instead of avoiding/ignoring them.

Uncomfortable, but not paralyzed: fear and the pushing of boundaries is good and necessary within education, but we don't want people to freeze and turn off totally.

Comments: I'll echo something here that he stated: this is also important outside of a school setting. I had a manager (well, I've had many, but this one was a good one) who said that he wanted employees who failed, because it meant they were actually taking risks in their work. Obviously it's important to learn from one's mistakes, but you get the idea.